The pop­u­lar up­ris­ing against po­ten­tial mil­it­ary in­ter­ven­tion in Syr­ia has scrambled Wash­ing­ton’s typ­ic­al left-right polit­ics. Just con­sider some scenes around the cap­it­al this week.

Rep. Keith El­lis­on, D-Minn., a co­chair­man of the Pro­gress­ive Caucus, walked past an an­ti­war protest and got heckled for sup­port­ing air strikes, while tea-party Rep. Kerry Bentivolio, R-Mich., earned cheers for his op­pos­i­tion. Chris­toph­er Preble of the non­in­ter­ven­tion­ist Cato In­sti­tute vis­ited the usu­ally hawk­ish Her­it­age Found­a­tion and was shocked to hear his rival think-tankers “ba­sic­ally say­ing ex­actly what I would have said.” And Demo­crat­ic firebrand Alan Grayson of Flor­ida teamed with House Re­pub­lic­an col­leagues to or­gan­ize a guer­rilla whip­ping op­er­a­tion.

“I can’t re­mem­ber when Mo­ve­On and Freedom­Works were on the same side of any­thing,” said Steph­en Miles of the Win Without War co­ali­tion.

It’s such a nov­el mo­ment for Wash­ing­ton that some spec­u­late we may fi­nally be see­ing the myth­ic­al pop­u­list co­ali­tion between anti-in­ter­ven­tion­ist liber­tari­ans on the right and an­ti­war civil liber­tari­ans on the left that former Rep. Ron Paul and Ral­ph Nader have dreamed about for years. “I think it’s totally real,” said Becky Bond, the polit­ic­al dir­ect­or of Credo Mo­bile, one of the first lib­er­al voices to op­pose in­ter­ven­tion in Syr­ia. “As someone who was do­ing this kind of work in the run-up to the in­va­sion of Ir­aq, this feels very dif­fer­ent. It’s a real left-right co­ali­tion.”

In­deed, Syr­ia has tilted the polit­ic­al land­scape 90 de­grees, turn­ing the fa­mil­i­ar par­tis­an di­vide in­to a ver­tic­al split between the lead­er­ship in both parties, which fa­vors mil­it­ary in­ter­ven­tion, and the parties’ anti-in­ter­ven­tion­ist grass­roots bases. And it comes on the heels of a re­viv­al of “liber­tari­an pop­u­lism” on the right, alarm over civil liber­ties on the left, and a gen­er­al war wear­i­ness among Amer­ic­ans of all stripes.

The tea party has been nearly un­an­im­ous in its op­pos­i­tion to strikes against Syr­ia, and Matt Kibbe, pres­id­ent and CEO of Freedom­Works, a tea-party group, thinks it’s more than just knee-jerk op­pos­i­tion to Obama. “It’s a shift; it’s a re­align­ment,” Kibbe said. On is­sues such as civil liber­ties, elec­tron­ic sur­veil­lance, drones, and crim­in­al-justice re­form, “there’s ab­so­lutely a con­ver­gence. We’re build­ing a new co­ali­tion.”

“You’re see­ing com­ing to fruition a lot of the ground­work that was laid over sev­er­al years,” Miles said. It star­ted in Ir­aq, with an­ti­war House Re­pub­lic­ans such as Paul and North Car­o­lina’s Wal­ter Jones, he said, and has ma­ter­i­al­ized more re­cently in bi­par­tis­an le­gis­la­tion to trim de­fense spend­ing.

One law­maker who has tapped in­to that co­ali­tion is fresh­man Rep. Thomas Massie of Ken­tucky, a Re­pub­lic­an who has in­tro­duced bills with Demo­crats to leg­al­ize in­dus­tri­al hemp pro­duc­tion and end man­dat­ory min­im­um sen­tences. He told Na­tion­al Journ­al that the grass­roots op­pos­i­tion to Syr­ia was un­like any­thing he’s seen since the pop­u­list fur­or over the bank bail­outs in 2009. And it may be just the tip of the ice­berg. “It’s cer­tainly not a one-off,” Massie said. “I think there are a lot of op­por­tun­it­ies go­ing for­ward.”

If you want a glimpse of what this co­ali­tion might look like, the Ju­ly roll-call vote on the amend­ment to end Na­tion­al Se­cur­ity Agency bulk sur­veil­lance sponsored by Reps. Justin Amash, R-Mich., and John Con­yers, D-Mich., is a good place to start. The meas­ure earned 111 Demo­crat­ic and 94 Re­pub­lic­ans ayes and split the parties in­tern­ally between more-hawk­ish lead­ers and the pri­vacy-minded rank and file. The Wash­ing­ton Post‘s Greg Sar­gent com­pared the res­ult to a whip count on Syr­ia and found “strik­ing” over­lap.

The two sides of­ten come to the same is­sue for com­pletely dif­fer­ent reas­ons. The Na­tion­al Rifle As­so­ci­ation, for in­stance, re­cently joined the Amer­ic­an Civil Liber­ties Uni­on on a law­suit chal­len­ging the NSA’s sur­veil­lance pro­grams. The NRA’s con­cern is that sur­veil­lance could be used to cre­ate a na­tion­al gun re­gistry — a fear that crit­ics dis­miss as con­spir­at­ori­al — but whatever the motive, the ACLU is happy for the sup­port.

But while a con­stitu­ency might be there, no move­ment now ex­ists to chan­nel the en­ergy bub­bling up from the grass­roots in­to real polit­ic­al power. In­stead, the pop­u­list wings of the Left and the Right tend to or­gan­ize them­selves in par­al­lel and have little in­terest in join­ing forces — at least pub­licly. “When it comes to grass­roots or­gan­iz­ing, you see dif­fer­ent groups com­ing to­geth­er on cer­tain votes,” Kibbe said, “then go­ing back to their re­spect­ive camps when it comes time for polit­ics.”

Mark Meck­ler cofoun­ded the Tea Party Pat­ri­ots, the move­ment’s largest um­brella group, but stepped down last year and joined with an un­likely ally, Mo­ve­On.org founder Joan Blades, to fa­cil­it­ate “liv­ing-room con­ver­sa­tions” among people with dif­fer­ent polit­ic­al views. “There’s just a whole lit­any of is­sues where the people are on the same side, but the politi­cians and the me­dia are work­ing very hard to keep us apart,” Meck­ler said. He cited a trans-par­tis­an skep­ti­cism of “big­ness,” in terms of both gov­ern­ment and cor­por­ate power, and es­pe­cially when they team up. “You can go far right or far left, and you come full circle.”

Des­pite that con­ver­gence, Meck­ler said, it’s hard for or­gan­iz­a­tions that have to cater to bases — of­ten by beat­ing up on the oth­er side — to cross the polit­ic­al di­vide. He notes that the Tea Party Pat­ri­ots would some­times work with lib­er­al groups on is­sues where they had com­mon ground and even share re­sources, but al­ways through back chan­nels.

Per­haps someone could come along and cap­ture this bi­par­tis­an pop­u­list mo­ment, but who? No one has cred­ib­il­ity in both camps, which des­pise each oth­er on all but a hand­ful of is­sues.

And that’s the prob­lem. A move­ment made up of the ex­tremes of both parties will, by defin­i­tion, have a hard time find­ing middle ground. There’s simply no re­con­cil­ing pop­u­list lib­er­als’ de­sire to ex­pand the wel­fare state with pop­u­list liber­tari­ans’ de­mand to slash it. Un­less they find more to agree upon, the pop­u­lists of both parties will be stuck fight­ing from the same po­s­i­tion, but fa­cing op­pos­ite dir­ec­tions.

"Chuck Rosenberg, the acting head of the Drug Enforcement Agency who has found himself and his agency at odds with the Trump administration in recent months, told staff members Tuesday that he is planning to step down from his post." The Obama administration holdover will step down on October 1.

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HAD BEGUN TO PUBLICLY CRITICIZE TRUMP

Sen. Corker to Retire

1 hours ago

THE DETAILS

Another Republican member of Congress is showing himself out the door. After much thought, consideration and family discussion over the past year, Elizabeth and I have decided that I will leave the United States Senate when my term expires at the end of 2018,” said Sen. Bob Corker in a statement. The Tennessean has served since 2006.

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NOT ILLEGAL, BUT MUST BE FORWARDED TO WORK ACCOUNTS

At Least 6 WH Advisors Used Private Email Accounts

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THE LATEST

Jared Kushner, Stephen Bannon, Reince Priebus, Gary Cohn, Stephen Miller, and Ivanka Trump sent or received some emails on personal accounts that related to White House business. "Officials are supposed to use government emails for their official duties so their conversations are available to the public and those conducting oversight. But it is not illegal for White House officials to use private email accounts as long as they forward work-related messages to their work accounts so they can be preserved."

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SAYS CONTACTS WERE “BENIGN”

Stone Releases Correspondence with Guccifer 2.0

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"Roger Stone, a longtime friend and adviser to Donald Trump, released correspondence Tuesday" with the online hacker known as Guccifer 2.0 , which "U.S. intelligence agencies said was used by Russian government-linked entities to distribute embarrassing information about Democrats during the 2016 election. The disclosures came in a 47-page opening statement made available to reporters in advance of Mr. Stone’s Tuesday appearance in front of the House Intelligence Committee." Stone called his contacts with Guccifer "limited" and "benign."

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PRIEBUS, SPICER, HICKS, MCGAHAN

Mueller Could Start Interviewing White House Figures This Week

1 hours ago

THE LATEST

"Special counsel investigators could start interviewing current and former White House staff as soon as later this week regarding the Russian probe, two sources familiar with the matter tell CNN. One source cautioned it is still being worked out with Robert Mueller's office and said it might be delayed until next week." Among those who could have a sit-down with the special prosecutor: former chief of staff Reince Priebus, former press secretary Sean Spicer, communications director Hope Hicks, White House counsel Don McGahn, communications adviser Josh Raffel and associate counsel James Burnham.